Copyright 2021
Alex Feng, Alex Lau, Dimitri Santiago
Medieval Cat Cookout will be
a fast paced 2D Snake-Like adventure game, where the player will put
together a small “snake” of party members and attempt to
navigate through a maze-like stage/level of obstacles, loot, and
enemies to reach the end goal. Each party member will have their own
class and actions associated with bringing them along, which may
help you get over obstacles or survive enemy attacks.
Your
goal is to get from the start point to the end point while
collecting as much loot as you can with as few casualties as
possible! Make your way through dead ends, traps, obstacles, and
enemies that want to take everything you have, including your party
members.
Medieval Cat Cookout will be developed using the Wolfie2D game engine by Joe Weaver.
Set in the medieval era, warriors of the Cookout Kingdom had just been attacked by a neighboring warring cat tribe, the Fast Food Dynasty. You, a cat warrior, awake, and witness the ruins of your kingdom. To avenge and rebuild, you gather survivors of the Cookout Kingdom to plan an attack on the warring cat tribe. Strategically infiltrate their fortress and use weapons like ketchup, spatula, and pan, and armors like, pot helmet and chainmail. Pick your fights and party wisely, because that’s all there is left to avenge the Cookout Kingdom!
The tone is definitely comedy with strategy. The narrative is that of an avenger/redemption storyline. The main goal is to defeat the enemies that have wronged you.
The objective of the game is to get to the end with as few casualties and as much loot as possible. They want to accomplish this objective because the next level will be increasingly hard and the player doesn’t want to game over.
The main gameplay will function very similar to the classic game “Snake”, in which the player will control a snake-like line of characters, each taking up a full tile, that continues to move in the last direction input without stopping. The player will use their controls in order to direct the snake from the starting point to the exit of each stage. Stages will contain various obstacles, traps, dead ends, turns, enemies, and loot to pick up. Some loot may help the player in the form of equipment that can alter stats (more HP, slow down or speed up the snake, etc). Enemies will attempt to collide with the player’s snake, damaging the character whose tile is adjacent to the enemy. When one of these characters has taken too much damage, they will be permanently removed from the snake, and the rear will move up one tile to fill in the space. Some of these characters can fight back too-- when taking damage, they will deal damage back to the enemy.
There will be “survivors”
on some stages that the player can choose to rescue, which they will
be able to add to their snake for the next stage. There will be a
maximum number of characters the player can bring with them into a
stage, but they should make an attempt to save as many as they can
in case a tragedy takes one of their favorites.
Between
levels, the player will be able to make changes to their party and
buy items, which will get more and more expensive between stages,
but also increase in power/effectiveness.
If
the player fails a level, they will face a game-over screen and be
brought back to the preparation menu before a stage. Here they can
make necessary changes to their party and strategy. However, upon
completing a stage, any casualties or loot used/spent will be
permanently changed.
The A.I will be moving in a predetermined path until they see the player’s characters in which they will chase after them and attack.
The basic interactive structure will be different levels where each level is a new map with increasing difficulty.
The game will be continuous action where the “snake” will constantly be moving and enemies will be attacking.
The game will be at a medium difficulty, but if we have time, we’ll add more difficulties and maybe challenge modes. It involves strategy such that you must use your snake of characters to defeat a number of enemies. There will be times where multiple enemies will fight the characters in your snake.
For the demo, we plan on the average player taking about an hour to complete the game. For the full game release, we plan on 10+ hours for story mode. We might even add an endless game mode!
This game will be single player versus computer AI. The player will be controlling a 4-5 character snake that moves like a snake. New characters are recruited onto the snake by reaching them. These new characters will have for example: archer/mage items. These will all be positioned in the snake in an order to the players liking, ex. 1st position, 2nd position… 5th position
This game will be played using both a keyboard and mouse. Once started, use the following:
W - Move up
A - Move left
S - Move down
D - More right
E - Open equipment menu
ESC - Pauses the game and opens the in-game menu
The general style of the graphics will be pixel art with a medieval, cat, and fast-food style. Characters will be cats, while the environment will be designed with a mixture of medieval themes and locations with a fast food chain flair.
We will attempt to implement a dialogue system with some cut-ins and text boxes, but for time’s sake the story may be told in a series of still images before and after each stage.
The perspective will be a top-down 3rd person 2D view, with a viewport that follows the “head” end of your party snake. Before each stage, the player will be able to zoom out this view port to get an early idea of the stage’s layout and dangers, but there’s always more than what meets the eye.
There will be a counter on
the bottom right or left to indicate the number of gold the player
has collected. A button will be pressed to pause the game and open
the inventory to equip/unequip items.
Splash Screen
This screen will feature the title and authors of our game, the engine it was created in, and an original artwork to introduce the player into our game’s world. They proceed to the main menu/start screen on click/key press.
Start Screen
This screen will contain our logo and several buttons: start game, options, and quit game.
This resembles a drive thru menu board planted in a grassy hill seen on the splash screen
Level Selector
Controls Screen
This screen shows the player what each control does.
Help Screen
Preparation Screen
Before the start of every level, the player can spend their gold and change the equipment and order of their characters.
Pause Screen / Inventory
Screen
The pause screen can be brought up at any time during main gameplay. It will pause and hide the game. Resume will continue the game. The inventory button will redirect to the inventory screen. The control button will redirect to the control screen. The restart button will ask for confirmation if this the player would like to restart the level without saving progress, and restart the level on confirmation. Quit button will return to the main menu after asking for confirmation if the player would like to quit the current level without saving. For flavor, we will have a list of cute facts or puns the game will cycle through on each pause.
The Inventory screen will display the party’s current inventory status, with each item owned being displayed in a separate cell. Each party member is displayed alongside their name, HP, Power, and current Equipment. Items are split into two categories: equipment and food. Players can drag equipment items onto party members to change the equipment, and can drag food items onto party members to feed and heal them. Alternatively, players can clean up their inventory by dragging items into the trash can at the top right, which will ask for confirmation before discarding the item permanently. Clicking an item will display in text a brief description. At the top of this screen, the player has a return button to return to the previous screen.
In-Game Screen
A 2D top-down view of the level. There will be a “snake” of characters with their HP bar shown. There will also be obstacles, traps, loot, and enemies.
(1) The total HP of the
party.
(2) A
timer, showing how much time has elapsed since starting the stage.
Players will be able to see their best time on completed
levels.
(3) The
current stage
(4)
The amount of loot collected
(5)
Gameplay directions. The direction being pressed/moved in will
appear to be “pressed down”. Also allows for Mouse click
Controls.
Birds-Eye View Example
We can see the end goal of
the stage is highlighted blue, NPCs are highlighted RED, enemies
are highlighted PURPLE, and the party is highlighted GREEN. The
gray dotted box represents the player’s viewport. We have doggie
bags to represent food items that can be picked up, and we have
chests representing equipment that can be picked up for now.
Coins
are represented by the gold rings.
The following art needs to be created:
Cat Template
Walking left
Walking right
Walking up
Walking down
Taking damage
Dying
Attacking
Armors/Weapons
Left view
Right view
Up view
Down view
Gold
Healing Potion
Floor, Wall, Trap, Obstacle Tiles
1 cat template, use different colors to differentiate cats
Armors will be added on top to fit the cat template
facial color differentiation
Every action in the game should be accompanied by a sound, and the sounds should be prioritized so that the important sounds don't get "stepped on" by less important sounds.
Sword swing
Bow
Heal
Knife
Taking damage
Blocking
Dying
Killing
Coins collected
Item collected
Level finished
Different music will be used on different levels to imply the difficulty and/or theme of the level.
Outside Cookout Kingdom ruins
Grass/dirt/indoor floors. Cafeteria tiles and stone floors. Long broken tables, condiment stains.
Obstacles: demolished walls & pillars, broken carts, food stands
Enemies: tribal-esque, angry fast food consumers. Fine Dining janitors, servers.
End goal: enter Fine Dining Dynasty’s Entrance Gate
Inside Fine Dining Dynasty
Restaurant themed tiles, tables, candles, grey/dark grey walls, fancy food emblems/flags
Obstacles: corridors, long cafeteria tables,
Enemies: knight armor + chef hats hat + emblem, spatula weapon, Archer apron + hairnet + emblem, ketchup mustard bottles
End goal: reach the Chamber of “INSERT BOSS NAME”
Chamber of “INSERT BOSS NAME”
Long corridor leading to door of office of CEO